Anniversaries
by TheUncannySapiens
Summary: or: "A Collection of Semi-Hard Knocks and Not Entirely False Lies". Her mother dies, but who would have guessed that it sets loose a countdown to her own death? Each year, she's not quite where she expected to end up - better, worse, happier, and sadder than she ever thought she'd be. / T for minor language and mentionings of suicide and euthanasia.


**A/N: **I've felt like doing this for a while now. Concerning the time frame, I only took a guess. Thirteen, Cameron and such really seem to young in the beginning of their being in House's team to actually be that advanced and althought I'm not sure how long becoming a doctor takes in the US I think it's four years pre-med or something related in college and then four years med school, so... even if I'm wrong, that's what I used for orientation. Time-wise, that is.

I like the Oxford comma. I really do. The only problem is that I forget to use it when I'm tired and approximately 85% of this has been written and revised after 3:30 a.m. on various nights.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own House MD. It belongs to FOX. I would like to own House, but wouldn't really want to be accosicated with FOX. ;D

Please leave a review, if you feel like it. Good or bad, I'll take it. :)

* * *

**Anniversaries**

or

** A Collection of Semi-Hard Knocks and Not Entirely False Lies**

* * *

_It is strange that the years teach us patience;_

_that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting._

British-American Actress Elizabeth Taylor

* * *

She knows what happened when they come home in the afternoon. They haven't been home that time on a Staurday in months, and she hasn't come downstairs just to greet them even once. Now she does, and there are tears in their eyes, and her brother just stares at her, and sais "Mom died".

She nodds, but it makes Amy sobb somewhat.

Her father sais something like "Not like that" because the message sounded rough although that's actually how her brother sounds when he's sad, and then pulls Remy into a hug because she gets rough when she's sad, too, and he knows she won't seek comfort on her own. It's the first time in a while, and tighter than when you casually express your fondness for someone. He cries, which doesn't provide a great deal of comfort, but at least they get to share something. She cries, too.

The funeral is supposed to be three days later but she's quite sure that she won't go. She didn't attend the death, what's the point in watching the sequel? Her father sais "Please come", and that's why.

* * *

The first year is the hardest one, she figures, because there are so many first times. Big ones, like Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or birthdays, but then there's waking up as a semi-orphan, and going to school, and coming home, and visiting relatives, and hanging out with friends again, and laughing again without having a mother somehow, somewhere. Her father goes to visit the grave, and so do her siblings, reluctantly. They don't force her into anything, which is why she gets to stay home. Flowers and headstones and gravel footpaths. And skeletons, but that's not the kind of remains people are looking for on a graveyard, and because there's nothing else there for her, Remy doesn't bother looking for it.

At night she climbs through her window on the roof and sits there for a while. It's raining and new moon, so she can't see the stars, and it's cold, but she doesn't care. Two minutes after midnight climbs Remy back into her room and wakes up six hours later, without a mom, for the 365th time.

* * *

She screams "She's not coming back, so fucking deal with it!" through the house to make an eleven year old cry and then stomps out. That evening she has her first real kiss and her first can of beer. They're wonderful.

* * *

"Do you want to talk about your mom?"

"No." White lie. Would there anything to say, she'd like to say it. The point is, there isn't. Her mom used to say _speech is silver _but never the second part but never the rest of it because silence in their house has never been gold but only swallowed or resentment. She chokes on the _no_. Yeah, silence would be kind of golden now. She feels a bit dirty for not having anythig to say, and being pretty cold because she's staying home again.

"Do you mind the marriage?"

"No." The truth. Oddly enough, she hasn't even given a lot of thought to it. Who cares, anyway? It's not her life. None of her concerns. Somebody else in the house. Well, friends are here, too. And somebody to clean once a week.

"Do you want to watch a movie?"

She hesitates for a moment, because it's a strangely petty question to ask all of the sudden, but she actually really wants to watch a movie, because she really doesn't want to do anything at all. "'kay."

They rent Hitchcock movies and watch them until the others come home. Her brother only dropped by from college and Amy has a dance rehearsal in half an hour.

* * *

She visits the grave this time. It hasn't changed much since the funeral, and she has a pretty good memory, except for the headstone that they put of the grave later, and the flowers. They are less but livelier. Happier. No more funeral-flowers, but stuff that lasts a while and doesn't need to be taken care of all the time. They go after school. Her brother is home because he wants to visit some friends and it just so happens to be that day of the year again. It's convenient, honestly.

She climbs on the roof at night again and he joins her with a bottle of tequila. They trade swigs and after an hour or so he asks her not to tell anybody, which she swears to the universe, and then sais "I took the test. Results came back a month ago."

She whispers "and?" besides knowing the answer, which is why she then sais "you have it" and then she throws up into the gutter. When she's done he hands her the bottle and she takes a long, cleansing slug.

"What's it like?" He drinks some more, too. Two tomcats fight on the lawn, sounding like crying infants in distress, until one surrenders the other. "Sucks", he sais, and she nodds. "Yeah, sucks."

* * *

Her senior year in High School has just begun. She's the youngest one. A little strange. A little messed up, too. But except for one failed art assignment depicting a scene of anal sex between two elder men (she was bored, and doesn't like art, and who is to say her interpretation of _The Creation of Adam_ can't be two seniors fucking each other in the ass? It's two guys touching, just pretty much the opposite of their fingers, really, and nothing being created, so...) a year ago, she's the best. Far and away, actually.

She doesn't think much about her mother any longer, but her brother's death won't leave her mind. Not that it's close, obviously. They haven't talked about it since he told her a year ago, but she's watching his hands every time they meet and they aren't shaky on anything like that. He's too young to have it yet, anyway. Nobody else knows. She's afraid of spotting a symptom some day. He quit coffee and works out more often. Her dad should have noticed, even though he doesn't see his son often. He should've. Just 'cause.

"Is it contagious?", her boyfriends of five days aks and flushes a bit because he's the son of a preacherman, "you know, should you... if we... could I... get it?" She doesn't know and doesn't care if she has it or not. He searches his gym bag for a condom. She leaves.

* * *

Her roommate cloggs the shower drain with long blond strians hair. Then she draggs Remy to church for the sake of being Christian, because she doesn't know anything anyway, and then Remy draggs her to a party and is the only one whose fake ID makes her 18 years old, which is why nobody ever suspects that it's a fraud.

* * *

She's a bitch but a popular one.

Some say she's easy but too many tried to get her for that to be true, and until recently a lot of them kept their distance because if you're 19 and doing a 17 year old, that technically makes you a pedophile and pedo pre-meds have a hard time getting a job.

They assume that, at least.

They don't know, because they don't know anybody whom it has happened to.

They really don't know a lot of stuff. The human skeletton and nervous system and how to give an injection or sponge baths, but not the stuff that you really need to know when you're a student and thinking about something that isn't, in the strictest sense, medicine.

They don't ask, though, because one thing everybidy, really _everybody_, knows is that they should have started building a good reputation ten years ago. That's how important that is.

There's the rumor she's gay and a rumor she's not, and some say she's just that pretentious, and nobody honestly cares, besides. Her pretentiousness is a fact, definitely, but how many college kids don't have that?

It's certainly _a_ reputation.

* * *

She knows three things.

One: She wants to be a doctor more than anything, and that includes everything.

Two: You have to live in the moment, and she's never going to get tested.

Three: If you're like her you're bound to end up on your own, but that's okay because life can still be pretty damn awesome for you!

* * *

Her sister was on her way of becoming a lawyer for exactly six weeks before quitting. Her brother is a broker now. He knows what's going to happen, Remy and Amy don't. Remy doesn't care. For Amy it's a 50 percent chance of realizing that you wasted your entire life and something you don't even love, so instead of not being a coward and getting tested she's in Somalia now and trying to help people and maybe get killed before knowing if it's really worth it or not.

* * *

She passes her first oral exam of med school. With flying colours, actually. Her father calls her thrice but she misses each one and, in the endm only writes him a short text, _All is well_, which suggest what she doesn't write: _Are you okay?_ And _I hope you are._ It's been ten years. Of course he is.

* * *

Her brother used to tell her there were demons hiding under her bed that had come there straight from hell and were out to eat her flesh and drink her blood and dragg her soul down to hell with them. Her mother told her there was no such thing as hell and that it was only a concept, and neither were there monsters. This is how she learned that it's the same with heaven and souls, and it's really just the mind that gets screwed up after a while.

* * *

Her sister is in Swasiland, improving some small villages' access to clean water. She lost a finger in Somalia nit htat's okay becaue the two people she was travelling with got themselves killed and what's a stupid finger compared to that? Remy figures that Amy has probably saved more lives than she evr will. So much for the use of grad school.

She puts two careful, neat stitches into a woman's finger, closing up a short but deep but. The woman is a chef in an Italian restaurant and taking care of her injury does really not feel life-altering at all.

* * *

She's a real doctor now. It's stupid, but the words follow her through as she runs, walks, hurries through hallways and stairs, repeating _Dr. Remy B. Hadley, M.D. Actual, as-real-as-it-gets medic._ She likes the sound of it. Even her inner voice avoids the second name. Her maternal grandparents were French, and her parents, apparently, high from having a second child.

* * *

Before it's too late and anybody can hold her back she yells "Get out of the way!" and performs a tracheotomy with a steak knife as if she's starring a freaking movie. Some guy takes out his phone and before he gets to snap a picture she's run off the scene because she doesn't want to be in the local news and she doesn't want to explain to the EMTs how she could have taken such a fucking big risk either. House complains that she's late. Another good reason to keep her picture out of the paper.

* * *

If you're not there for the suffering, you don't get to watch the dying part. Maybe that's just Karma in action because she really wishes she knew what it would be like now. The paper is neatly folded in thrids, serving as a kind of bookmark, in her bag when she rings at the door and waits for her brother to open.

She hugs him tightly and asks about therapy, and how is everything going for you, and how are your wife and children (at work and school because it's morning and he can't be there because he's getting angry sometimes and quit drinking from glasses).  
"I tested myself" she begins and fully -in all honesty, that's really what she's trying to do- wants to tell him everything and then cry for a little bit, but before she knows what's happening a smile spreads over her face and he continues "You're alright?" and she nodds a lie about it.

* * *

_For each ecstatic instant/ we must an anguish pay/ in keen and quivering ratio/ to the ecstasy. _Dickinson. She must have had the best past life ever.

* * *

If she knows anything for sure it's that she doesn't belong here. She's not supposed tp be wearing jumpsuits, and to use the toilet in front of other people, and to eat food that looks and tastes rotten, and to be told when to see a doctor just to be told that -surprise, surprise!- there's still nothing we can do but we need to proove that we give a shit about the dying people here, and no, lets not talk about other inmates' cases. Don't be a criminal if you don't like being bored. But here's a Sudoku, only half-solved. That will do.

The worst part is that she takes it and solves it later that day. Her cellmate gives her an odd look when she returns and sais "You really shouldn't be here" and Remy returns the look and shruggs, and suddenly deciddes that it's time.

"Want to hear something funny?" And then she comes around with a whole lot of unfunny, true things. There's one thing she learned, which is that she wanted to be a sister more than she wanted to be a doctor.

* * *

Three questions remain unanswered and those are

One: What to do with the rest of her life, now that it is her own.

Two: If becoming spiuritual and/or idiotic is an option, and if one entails the other.

Three: Which one to travel first, the Middle East or Subsaharan Africa.

* * *

House is dead. There's a fair chance that Amy would do it if she asked her but Remy knows of the burden and it's not an option. Amy once asked what it was like and Remy is pretty sure that she did it because she's scared she'll have to do it. She writes a note and puts it in-between her insurance stuff at home, so they'll she that she won't put it on them.

* * *

It's on her to make sure it's done a good while before she doesn't have the motor skills to do it or before she doesn't have the mind to remember that this is what, in one way or another, she wants.

Her time hasn't come yet. It has _certainly_ not come yet, but what else is there left to do? It's a bit of a clichéd day to pick, and the hardest part had been that there was an alternative that seemed just as convenient. Well, now there's two days for two murders. Or one day for twice the amount of cowardice. She woke up this morning feeling splendid but that doesn't change the fact that she now tongues the barrel of a gun that feels too cold in her mouth and tastes like iron and smells like iron, too. Suddenly, she can't quite hold it steady any longer and she yanks it upwards in a jerked, unvoluntary motion. An edge of a tooth breaks lose and feels like fine gravel in her mouth. She gulps it down and decides to take it as a sign.  
Maybe, maybe this is her time after all.

Except that she can still think for herself.

Except that she can walk like any normal person, and looks like somebody who isn't going to die for another 50 or 60 years which is pretty good for someone who'd die in five to seven, eight, nine years if she wouldn't actually die in ten minutes.

Except that she really, _really_ doesn't want to be dead at all.

And it's all a coward's fault who quit because he felt like it and not because he had to.

But she has to. There's no way out except this one. No real one, at least. It's all planned out and she still hates the plan but is almost okay with how it has to go now, and that's as much peace as she'll ever get. What happens, happens. And this, there is no question... well... she closes her eyes.

Three,

two,

one...

* * *

_You cannot let your parents anywhere near your real humiliations._

"Open Secrets" by Alice Munro


End file.
